


Unknown but remembered

by Jactrades



Category: The Giver - Lois Lowry
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-19
Updated: 2011-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:09:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jactrades/pseuds/Jactrades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't think we've had a Storyteller in the community for a long time."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unknown but remembered

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this](http://igrockspock.livejournal.com/173793.html?thread=1930465#t1930465") picture prompt.

Lily finds the photograph in the archive within the Annex of the House of the Old.

 _The colors are all wrong_ , she thinks as she lifts the tattered sheet from the dusty file, and smiles at the thought.

There’s no reason that she can see for the image to exist at all. The details of the plants are too hazy for it to be a learning aide - besides there's no botanical name given. The file itself has a label, as uninformative as it is precise, tidily written in a firm hand: _Place - Elsewhere, Time - Before_.

The Community now has a new definition for Before. There's the slight hesitation, always: "It happened a few years before... Before." Before _he_ left the Community. No one mentions the name, ever, although it hasn't been designated Not-To-Be-Spoken.

There aren't many decrees from the Elders anymore.

The edges of the photograph have been worn away from more than time, she realizes, looking closer. Someone once looked at - held - touched this image often. Some _one_ once valued it enough to keep it, keep it safe for a future that didn't - wouldn't - couldn't see the possibilities in the faded colors.

The unknown and unknowable stories are always the ones that set her mind flickering about, like the fireflies she now dreams of.

Lily's Assignment may be Historian, her life's task to record the Not-My-Memories. (A lie, not merely imprecise language. They were _all_ their memories now.) But that's not who she is.

She gently places the photograph aside. On the next Unscheduled Holiday she'll try to write the story of this photograph, and the someone who loved it.


End file.
